Feb 6 1996

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NASA announced its plan to shift authority over the Shuttle program from NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC, to Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas. JSC also would take control over construction of the International Space Station. The shift was one of NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin's efforts to restructure NASA and remove layers of bureaucracy.

Goldin's mission centered on controlling costs and improving efficiency. With the change in organization, key managers at JSC and other regional centers such as Kennedy Space Center (KSC) gained new authority to act without consulting Goldin or other officials at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. The change caused some observers to comment that NASA was shifting back to the less strictly hierarchical model of operation that had characterized it before the Challenger accident. In response to the Challenger tragedy and the ensuing Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident (Rogers Commission Report), NASA had centralized some of its operations, to avoid the poor communication between regional centers that had contributed to the tragedy.

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